Got to the playground around 5. Chatting while A- swings. Glance to blue sky and see bird in flight coming my way. Big. Floating closer. Eagle? Wingspan about right. Wings fairly flat. Head looks light. Body's dark. Tail is dark. And long and large, well suited to the bird. Neck doesn't look folded or extended. It's come in from the east just north of where we sit. I'm getting my best view. Still trying to stay engaged in the conversation, but this thing doesn't look like anything. Wings rounded? Pointed? It's turning north. "It'll fly over our house in a minute." Hopeless now. Cormorant? Golden Eagle? Anhinga? LBH?
Why am I so captivated by the idea of drinking tasteless, slippery, crunchy-kerneled seeds? Because subja seeds sound like fun. I first learned of them by browsing The Indian Spice Kitchen , where Monisha Bharadwaj describes them, but Osimum basilicum seeds seem impossible to find. I made a special trip to Seattle's Uwajimaya to track them down, but came up empty. I stopped at Market Spice at Pike Street, where they hadn't heard of them (but they suggested another shop down the street). I went into Souk, where the gentleman understood what I was looking for only after I described it; he knew the seeds by a different name, which he couldn't remember, and said his sister gets them at a shop (the name not in his memory) on Roosevelt Avenue. But I was out of time in the city and couldn't follow up. (But before I took more than a few steps out Souk's door, the proprietor called me back in, because he had asked his arriving friend what those seeds were called. Tukmaria, ...
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